Essay: WHAT IF HIROSHIMA HAD NEVER HAPPENED?

It is a hot
August evening in Tokyo, just after nightfall, in the summer of 1945.
Workers scurry home through darkened streets still littered with the
charred rubble of the spring fire-bomb raids. The Cabinet sits late,
pondering the accumulating evidence of Japan's almost certain defeat;
but the diehards, led by War Minister Korechika Anami, want to fight to
the last breath. Suddenly, air-raid sirens wail. In the sky, just short
of the city, two Superfortresses wheel, and a single huge projectile
drops through the dark toward...